I have a fair amount of important business to attend to today, so I am not altogether sure that I will be able to address all the objections that people have made. I have promised Corax to reply to his cogent observations, so I will do that by tonight. I shall certainly deal with
everyone's concerns in due course however, even if that takes a day or two.
Unfortunately Atomic Suplex's mother insisted on coming over again this afternoon, but I'll try to finish with her quickly this time. It's not easy though, I'm telling you. Anyway:
I guess it depends on how you interpret the phrase 'world of ideas', but I'd think there'd be a fairly strong case to be made for thoughts / ideas significantly predating barter, and coming from the much more basic thoughts about survival eg I'm cold, I'm hot, I'm thirsty, I'm hungry etc. and the associated ideas of how to mitigate this problem, ie. where to find food, water, shelter, warmth, along with the instinct to reproduce.
Your use of the term "I" already implies the ability to conceptualize, and at quite an advanced level too. I put it to you that self-conscious subjectivity can only emerge out of a conceptualized engagement with the objective environment and cannot precede it. Animals display no such subjectivity. However I think we are in agreement on the central point I want to establish, to wit:
I'd agree that bartering would have had a place in the development of both language and thought process, particularly the idea of the perceived value of a 'thing' to be bartered, as well as in the notions of private property and wealth.
That is all I am arguing at this point. You then go on to introduce several apt but at this stage unnecessary qualifications:
as well as quality and quantity, there are other factors that would have to also be taken into account when determining the barter rate of the trade, such as;
- the relative need / desire each person has for the item they're trading
- the relative abundance of alternative soures of supply for each item being traded / bartered.
- the mentality of the people doing the trade - ie whether they have capitalist pig dog mentality, or love thy neighbour mentality
- come combination of the man hours vs land input required to produce the goods / animal to be bartered.
I'm not sure where you're going with this or why I'm replying other than you're 24 hour deadlines meaning that now that I'd made one post on this thread, by implication I'd have agreed with you if I didn't reply.
IF you meant that 'barter creates several distinct ways of looking at things, 2 of which are quality and quantity', then I'd go along with that.
That is indeed what I meant, so once again we are basically in agreement. However your list of production and demand-based factors involved in barter is superfluous to my argument, and so I believe I can be excused from addressing them. I do not want my argument to be diverted from its central focus, otherwise we will never arrive at my final proof.
All that I want to show is that in the very simplest act of exchange--object A for object B--(a) the concepts of quality and quantity have already come into being, and (b) most important, the
value of object A, which has not physical or material existence and occurs only in the human mind, must have become perceptible within the physical body of object B.
I'm assuming from what you say that you have no objection to this. But as usual on this thread, I will give you twenty-four hours to raise any quibbles you may have.
I shall return to deal with the other substantive points that have been raised at a later time.
